Carluccio's way

When Antonio Carluccio, the 72-year-old restaurateur, writer, TV presenter and self-proclaimed godfather of Italian gastronomy, says: “I have decided that 90 per cent of people would benefit”, he’s not talking about a spoonful of olive oil a day; he’s referring to psychiatric care, specifically his experiences as a patient at the Priory Clinic.

Just over a year ago, he checked himself in to the west London hospital after an accident in which he stabbed himself in the chest with a bread knife. “I was at home on my own. I was trying to cut a big piece of bread. I’d had a lot of whiskey . . . ,” was how he subsequently described the incident.

At the time, Carluccio’s marriage – his third – to Priscilla Conran, sister of the designer Sir Terence Conran, was imploding (they have since divorced). He had relinquished control over the chain of Carluccio’s Caffès they established together – netting a reported £10 million when floating it on the stock market in 2005. He had also closed the Neal Street Restaurant in Covent Garden that made his name as a restaurateur when he took it over at Sir Conran’s request in 1981. Tough times, by anyone’s standards.

For the first two years after selling the chain, Carluccio was employed as a consultant to the chain, but in 2008 that contract was not renewed. “It was a bit sad, because for me it was not just a question of money. In that sense I am not a real business man, I am more creative. I like that what I do is successful, and I believe that when you do something at your best, then money comes anyway,” he says in the heavily accented English that belies almost half a century living outside his native Italy.

In Dublin last week to publicise his new book, and to cast a roving eye over the Dublin outpost of the restaurant chain that bears his name (he is now back in the fold as a consultant to the rapidly expanding group), Carluccio is keen to play down the knife incident. “I was a bit down, a bit depressed, depressed because of various things.” He describes his state of mind at the time of the accident as: “a time when you see yourself and you draw the line and say, look, what have I done? And everything seems to be not good enough.” So you are a perfectionist? “Yes, I am. Not in everything, but in what I am doing, I want to be.”

He says his treatment at The Priory “was for my depression”, and tells me that he is better now. “The Priory – for me it was like a club,” he says. “Nobody could touch me, nobody could get in communication, and I felt safe. It was good. There are many people who don’t know that they have depression, and they have something to gain in having a bit of relaxation and thinking about themselves.”

So is he still receiving counselling? “No, no, no. I am over the top,” he says, completely unaware of the irony in his words. “Now, I am in a good place, my own place. I can determine what I want to do. Life is fantastic.”

Carluccio, the eldest of six children, was born in Vietri sul Mare on the Amalfi Coast and raised in wooded Piedmont. His life took a dramatic turn for the worse when his youngest brother, Enrico, died in a drowning accident at the age of 13, when Antonio was 23, and this tragedy, together with disturbing scenes he has talked about witnessing as a young child during the second World War, inform his complex persona. Although jovial and twinkly-eyed in a grandfatherly way, I suspect that Antonio Carluccio, like a good chef’s knife, has a core of steel.

But he is in charming form in Dublin, taking up several tables in the Dawson Street branch of Carluccio’s for himself and his entourage – personal assistant and public-relations representatives. Ordering bottles of “Panna with ice”, he tells me he isn’t very impressed with the local water. “Dublin water is really terrible. In London I drink tap water, but here . . . I tasted it this morning and said no, I can’t drink this.” But he is having a good time in Dublin, he says, updating his Twitter followers with accounts of what he is doing. “I was in Marco last night, it was very good. I made a bit of movement, because I wanted to mix my tartare myself, because I don’t like all the items,” he tells me, as I wonder what “a bit of movement” could possibly mean, and whether it generated a seismic shift reaction from the wait staff.

The following evening, he had dinner at Bentley’s. His PR representative says: “he is very fond of Richard Corrigan, who admits to having all of Antonio’s books”. He “also enjoyed the Shelbourne bar, where he invented a Guinness shandy – Guinness with a shot of whiskey”.

So what does he think of the Dublin branch of the chain the bears his name? “Very shiny, very good,” he says. “Usually companies like this centralise things – and that would be wrong for Carluccio’s. The trick is to have it like this – cooking on the premises – and making sure the cooking is fine, because it can vary. When I move from place to place I can find small differences and it’s up to me to correct those.”

When we talk about brand identity, and the company’s instantly recognisable stylish blue and white packaging (red and white for Christmas), he says: “Initially the idea was my wife’s – my ex-wife’s – she had a very good vision of what it should be. Stylish, but not too stylish; just enough to justify an operation like this, because it’s not too expensive. The philosophy at the beginning was to have a nice ambiance, good service – friendly but professional, very good simple food, and above all, not be too expensive. These are the factors that made Carluccio’s successful.”

When he is not working, and even at the age of 72 he has a ferociously busy schedule, Carluccio enjoys carving the distinctive walking sticks he uses on his mushroom hunting forays. “It’s called whittling,” he says, and shows me a picture on his camera of a pair of elaborately carved sticks he made for an Italian ambassador to the UK and his wife. He also sculpts, and paints, and talks animatedly about these pursuits. “Lately I was chosen by the Royal Institute of Oil Painting as a model,” he says with pride. “I had to stay still for four hours; 20 painters were painting my portrait, and at the end I could choose one.” He says he found some of the portraits “too aggressive” but very much likes the one he chose to keep, although he cannot remember the artist’s name. “Some of the paintings were real, but I didn’t find myself in them. But in that one, yes,” he says, referring to the rather flattering composition he eventually chose.

When it is framed, the portrait will hang on the walls of his new house in Putney, which he took possession of in September, after a protracted search. “It’s wonderful, I call it Castelluccio – little castle. You know home is usually your castle. I am very happy with it. I looked at about 25 houses then I saw it and said, that’s the one.”

It’s clear that having a home base is important to Carluccio, but he doesn’t, at the moment, seem to get to spend a lot of time there. He went straight from Dublin to Amsterdam to continue his book publicity tour, and there is more travelling on the horizon. “I am going to Australia, and from Australia we go to Hong Kong. The Mandarin Hotel has invited me for a week, to cook. In Dubai we’re opening another Carluccio’s, and I have consultancies in India.”

Just as well then that he enjoys travelling. “I do, yes. I went on holidays in August to France for 17 days, and then had six days all by myself in Sweden to pick mushrooms. In Sweden, the most wonderful thing is that you can enter any type of wood to collect whatever you like; they have to allow you to do that to pick mushrooms or berries. You can go anywhere, not like in England, it’s all ‘Private’ and ‘No Trespassing’.”

Carluccio’s cooking philosophy is the oft-quoted “MOF MOF” – minimum of fuss, maximum of flavour – and when cooking for himself, he says he “likes a good risotto, preferably with truffles, but we cannot use truffles here – a plate of truffle risotto would come with a price of £40-£50.

“I also like Chinese food very much, but not every Chinese. I like dim sum and I go to the New World restaurant often. There are trolleys coming around and there is instant gratification. I like chicken’s feet, tripe, all those things the British believe are not good.

“Do you like tripes?” he asks me. “No, definitely not,” I say. “That’s your upbringing. If you’d been fed it as a young girl, you’d find it normal,” he scolds.

Despite being very proud of the Commendatore OMRI title, the equivalent of a British knighthood, bestowed on him by his native country last year, Antonio Carluccio is not well known in Italy.

“Shall I tell you one thing . . . I am known very well all over the world, with the exception of Italy. Of my 15 books, only one or two have been translated into Italian.”

Is that a bit of a blessing? “Very much so,” says Comm. Antonio Carluccio OBE.

Antonio Carluccio's Simple Cookingis published by Quadrille, £20.